This painting was commissioned by a good friend of mine and her only request was that I include a White Lab and a Dachshund somewhere in the painting. So, I really didn't have a plan when I started, but I had been working on painting in a looser style and I knew I needed to incorporate the two dogs.. It's a large canvas, so to fill the space I just started painting a big yellow dog. There was no pencil work or sketch of any kind, I just began painting. To my amazement, (I don't consider myself to be the best drawer) I was able to get the look I was going for in the first take. This was good, because I had been wanting to do a large painting with a lot of space using much less paint than normal. I wanted the empty space to be as much as a part of the overall painting as the imagery. Almost like a water color, but much larger and with defined brush strokes. I did give the Lab a landscape by painting a few brush strokes of grass and added the red as a way to aid in indicating movement. I wanted the dog to look happy and eager.

Once I finished the yellow dog, I moved over to the Dachshund. To my amazement, once again, I captured the look I was going for with the first take. Again, I used "extra" lines near the tail to indicate movement in order to make the dog appear happy and eager. During the prep work for this piece (thinking while staring at the blank canvas) I remembered I had a thin wooden "window frame" I had been wanting to use for a while. I placed the window frame over the Dachshund and it seemed to create a barrier between the two "friends". It also created the necessary scenery to "explain" why the two characters don't reside in the correct relational space on the picture plane. Needing a "friendship prop", and noticing I had some available space beneath the Dachshund, I decided to paint a red toy ball. I chose red because I had already used that color on the backside of the Lab and I always try to use the same color at least twice. This encourages the viewers eyes to travel through the entire painting and not just get stuck in one spot. At this point the narrative was beginning to unfold.

Here we have two buddies who desperately want nothing more than to play with each other, but one is an inside dog and the other lives outdoors. It was quite ironic that this became the narrative of the piece, because at the time I was personally dealing with the loss of a longtime friendship. This made me deeply contemplate relationships in general (you might say this painting is what sparked the idea for Catch Me If You Can ​(2012). Creating this piece was quite therapeutic and helped me work through several artistic processes I had been wanting to tackle and also helped me reflect on the friendship I had recently thrown away.

Now, years later, the personal friendship that was lost is still that. I hope to make amends one day so I keep hoping I'll get that chance. Til then I'll continue to feel like the outside dog. This one is for you my old friend.

​LH

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